Redefinition Blues
“They
are our cousins. Perhaps, the ones who come to my--my heroes, are the macaques,
who are also known as rhesus monkeys. And when [ . . . ] participating in a
horrendous experiment in the 1960s, in which they were offered food as a reward
for shocking their fellows, for shocking other macaques, an enormous number of
them, some 60 percent, in every experiment refused to do so. They preferred to
go hungry rather than to inflict pain on their fellows. In one course of the
experiment, 87 percent of the macaques said no to the food rather than inflict
pain. And, in some cases, this was after two weeks of not being given any food.”
– Ann Druyan quoted at studsterkel.wfmt.com where Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
discuss their best-selling book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ballantine
Books, 1993)
Why don’t we see
underwater
dolphin cities
or ape castles in
forests?
Because they're
smarter.
Why didn’t rhesus
monkeys
cave immediately like
humans
in the Milgram
Experiment?
Because they're
kinder.
As we journeyed across,
what, exactly, did we gain
and lose?
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I used Carl Sagan's great 3 minute 26 second video Pale Blue Dot as a creative writing prompt in courses I taught many years. It was "Considering this video, what is your advice for people on the Pale Blue Dot?"
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